PRR Handrails

I have several of the "Pennsy Diesel Years" color photo books and use these as a guide for painting my PRR diesels. The great majority of these pix show that the handrails for switchers and road switchers, in both the PENNSYLVANIA-spelled-out scheme and the later large-red-herald-with-sans-serif-numbers-and-no-PENNSYLVANIA scheme are: All the same brunswick green body color except for: Yellow on the 8 vertical hand rails (the 2 each side of the 4 corner steps) from the lower hand rail attachment point up and around the top bend to the upper attachment point or first handrail post, and Yellow on the horizontal handrail on the ends above the coupler cut levers. The yellow is more of a Reefer Yellow shade and seems not to be the same as the slightly tan or "wheat-colored" Dulux Gold lettering color. On very dirty weathered units, the yellow parts of the handrails appear to be almost the same dirty color as the rest of the unit. Some units show this same yellow on the edges of the corner steps and on the edges of the end footboards, but this seems not to be anywhere near as common a practice as the yellow handrails. Hope this helps, and if anyone knows different, I'd like to know too. Gary Q

The handrails were painted with DGLE (Dark Green Locomotive Enamel...Brunswick Green to the un-anointed. 8-) )

The vertical handrails at the corner steps were yellow. The yellow extended to the first stanchion. On the GP35s at least there was a horizontal grab iron that crossed the pilot above the coupler and cutlever, that was yellow.

Check George Elwood's 'Fallen Flags' website for photos.

Bill